Collis Potter Huntington - Family Relationships

Family Relationships

Collis Huntington was the son of William and Elizabeth (Vincent) Huntington; born October 22, 1821, in Harwinton, Connecticut; he married, first, on September 16, 1844, Elizabeth T. Stoddard, of Cornwall, Connecticut. She died in 1883. He remarried on July 12, 1884, Arabella D. Worsham. He died at his Camp Pine Knot, in the Adirondacks, August 13, 1900.

The children of William Huntington and Elizabeth Vincent were

1. Mary Huntington, born 17 February 1810; married 2 June 1840, Daniel Sammis of Warsaw, New York.
2. Solon Huntington, born 13 January 1812.
3. Rhoda Huntington, born 13 October 1814; married 10 May 1834, Riley Dunbar of Wolcottville.
4. Phebe/Phoebe Huntington, born 17 September 1817; married 4 October 1840, Henry Pardee of Oneonta, New York.
5. Elizabeth Huntington, born 19 December 1819; married 5 April 1842, Hiram Yaker of Kortright, New York.
6. Collis Potter Huntington, born October 22, 1821.
7. Joseph Huntington, born 23 March 1823; d. 23 February 1849; never married
8. Susan L. Huntington, born August 1826; married 16 November 1849, William Porter, M.D., of New Haven, Connecticut
9. Ellen Maria Huntington, born 12 August 1835; married Isaac E. Gates of Orange, New Jersey

Collis Huntington was the adopted father of Clara Elizabeth Prentice, born in Sacramento, in 1860. She was a niece of the first Mrs. C. P. Huntington, and was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Huntington. Clara Elizabeth Prentice-Huntington (1860–1928), as she was called, married Prince Francis Edward von Hatzfeldt of Wittenburg, Germany, on October 28, 1889. They made their home in England.

Collis Huntington was also the adopted father of renowned hispanist Archer M. Huntington, son of Collis P. Huntington's second wife Arabella Worsham Huntington, by her first husband. Archer and his wife, sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington, founded a Spanish museum and rare books library, the Hispanic Society of America, in upper Manhattan, which is still free and open to the public, as well as the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, one of the largest of its kind in the world, and Brookgreen Gardens sculpture and botanical gardens near Murrells Inlet, South Carolina.

Collis was also uncle to another California railroad magnate, Henry E. Huntington, founder of the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California and the main force behind the Pacific Electric system in Los Angeles, California.

He was also related to Clarence Huntington, who was a president of the Virginian Railway, succeeding Urban H. Broughton, son-in-law of the VGN's founder, industrialist Henry Huttleston Rogers.

His youngest sister, Ellen Maria, was well known as a poet and writer of hymns.